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RHETORIC VS. REALITY: the Myth of “Renewable Natural Gas” for Building Decarbonization

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RHETORIC VS. REALITY: the Myth of “Renewable Natural Gas” for Building Decarbonization Earthjustice & Sierra Club | Rhetoric vs. Reality RHETORIC VS. REALITY: The Myth of “Renewable Natural Gas” for Building Decarbonization 1 Earthjustice & Sierra Club | Rhetoric vs. Reality JULY 2020 Sasan Saadat, Earthjustice’s Right to Zero campaign Matt Vespa, Earthjustice’s Right to Zero campaign Mark Kresowik, Sierra Club 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Policymakers seeking to cut emissions and reduce reliance on fossil fuels are increasingly examining energy use within buildings, which account for nearly 40% of carbon emissions globally. One of the largest drivers of these emissions is the burning of fossil fuels like gas for home heating, hot water, and cooking. In 2018, carbon emissions from U.S. buildings increased 10% due to growth in these uses alone.1 There is growing consensus that electrifying buildings – using electric appliances like heat pumps and induction stoves to replace the need for fuel combustion – is the clearest path to mitigating their pollution. Efficient, all-electric buildings eliminate on-site carbon emissions and methane leakage, and they can eventually achieve net-zero emissions as the grid becomes cleaner. Furthermore, building electrification eliminates the health impacts from burning gas indoors,2 and reduces the safety hazards from gas leaks and explosions, all while capitalizing on the declining costs of generating electricity from solar and wind power. Numerous studies indicate that electrification is the lowest-risk and lowest-cost method to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (“GHGs”) from buildings, while generating additional societal benefits. And because buildings last for many decades, avoiding gas infrastructure and appliances in new construction is crucial for avoiding lock-in of fossil fuel reliance. As such, many policymakers across the U.S. and globally see electrification as the future of buildings. By early 2020, more than 30 cities and counties in the U.S. passed policies requiring or supporting all-electric new construction. Gas utilities, which rely on maintaining and expanding fuel delivery infrastructure to buildings to generate revenue, view electrification as an existential crisis. The industry’s response has been to pitch fossil gas alternatives (“FGAs”) – often marketed as “renewable” natural gas (“RNG”) – as an alternative to building electrification. The argument goes that existing gas infrastructure can continue to operate by replacing today’s fuel with a range of biologically and synthetically derived non-fossil gaseous fuels. This report examines the potential for FGAs to decarbonize buildings and refutes the claim that FGAs are a viable alternative to building electrification. 1 EarthjusticeEarthjustice & & Sierra Sierra Club Club | | Rhetoric Rhetoric vs. vs. Reality Reality Topline findings include: • The potential supply of FGAs is a small fraction of gas demand. The gas industry’s own research found that after two decades of ramping up supply and production, FGAs could only replace 13% of the existing demand for fossil gas. Any strategy to reduce building emissions that relies on FGAs in lieu of electrification would not lead to complete decarbonization and diverts limited FGA supplies from more difficult to electrify sectors. • Replacing fossil gas with FGAs is extremely costly. High production costs mean FGAs range from 4 to 17 times more expensive than fossil gas. • FGAs have a mixed environmental record. Facilities where FGAs are produced can exacerbate air and water pollution impacts in nearby communities. When methane is intentionally produced, leakage throughout the distribution process can result in increased emissions. • FGAs perpetuate the health impacts of combustion. Burning FGAs in homes, offices, and commercial spaces has the same issues inherent to any combustion-based fuels: they produce toxins that harm the health of people living, working, or learning in these buildings and also contribute to local air pollution through continued emissions of NOx and other combustion byproducts. CLEAN ALL-ELECTRIC HOUSE GAS-BURNING HOUSE Local clean energy jobs Clean air Powered by gas Methane leakage Health and safety benefits Renewable energy Health and safety risks Indoor and outdoor Saves money and energy Wastes energy air pollution Through electrification, decarbonizing our buildings is also an opportunity to reduce legacy sources of indoor air pollution. 22 Earthjustice & Sierra Club | Rhetoric vs. Reality The report finds that due to the limited An internal set of AGA meeting notes from supply and high cost of biogas and March 2018 shows the industry determined synthetic gas, and the associated pollution FGAs can be used to “mitigate the and health impacts, the small and costly opposition’s fervor” to phase out the burning amount of FGAs available should be used to of gas due to climate concerns.4 decarbonize sectors where there are few or no lower-cost mitigation solutions. Buildings Another internal document makes clear do not meet these criteria. an awareness of FGAs’ limits, coming from an industry source: “[In my opinion], RNG Nevertheless, gas system incumbents will not sustain our industry at its present are embarking on a coordinated strategy size.”5 In another instance, a board member advocating for the use of FGAs in homes for a gas industry advocacy group told and buildings, irrespective of the fact that The Guardian on the record: “Dairy biogas low-grade building heat is a poor use case is way too expensive” to use in home or for the limited supply of high-cost, low- businesses – five to 10 times more expensive carbon FGAs. than fossil gas. “It doesn’t pencil out and it doesn’t make all that much sense from an The second half of the report looks at environmental standpoint. It’s a pipe dream.”6 both gas industry incumbents’ efforts to fight electrification through a well-funded We find a pattern of talking points and campaign to sway public opinion – often lobbying efforts that leverage FGAs as a through fake grassroots organizations – means of maintaining a gas-based heating and their misleading public rhetoric on the system and stalling the transition away from potential use of FGAs as an alternative fossil fuels. building electrification. This is not unfamiliar territory: The tactics Claims from utilities like Southern California come from the same energy industry Gas Company (“SoCalGas”) that replacing playbooks that have dismissed and 20% of fossil gas with FGAs can have the obfuscated the threat of climate change. same impact as electrification, or Dominion In this case, the widespread adoption of a Energy, that replacing 4% of fossil gas can proven and cost-effective means of fighting eliminate the entire carbon footprint of its climate change is being attacked and gas operations, are flawed and misleading stalled in order to protect fossil fuel financial given the limited supply of low-carbon FGAs. interests. These statements positioning FGAs as a Ultimately, FGAs do not provide a path to clean source of energy make more sense decarbonizing the gas grid in line with a net- when reviewing internal gas industry zero emissions energy system. Policymakers documents. The American Gas Association’s must see beyond the gas industry’s rhetoric (“AGA”) Clean Energy Task Force developed around FGAs and acknowledge the reality draft policy principles stating the AGA of their high costs, limited supply, and “supports policies that define the term environmental risk. ■ ‘renewable energy’ to include RNG on par with other energy sources, such as energy generated from wind or solar resources.”3 3 Earthjustice & Sierra Club | Rhetoric vs. Reality PART 1: The appropriate – and limited – role for lower-carbon gas alternatives on the road to decarbonization 4 Earthjustice & Sierra Club | Rhetoric vs. Reality Climate goals require 1. a gas phaseout To keep global average temperature from A 2019 study expanded the analysis to rising above 1.5°C and avoid the worst include leakage in distribution and end- impacts of climate destabilization, the uses, and found observed emissions from world must achieve net-zero emissions of local gas distribution to be a factor of two greenhouse gases by mid-century.7 This to three times larger than those in the U.S. requires us to stop burning fossil fuels as EPA’s inventory.13 Researchers in California rapidly as possible.8 Thus, greenhouse found average home leakage rates to gas emissions from unabated gas use be 0.5%, representing leaks “an order of are incompatible with achieving net-zero magnitude larger” than earlier estimates.14 emissions.9 Even aiming for the far less safe 2°C warming scenario would mean keeping Importantly, methane leakage issues more than half of the world’s existing gas are not limited to fossil gas. Whether the reserves unused and unburned.10 methane is synthetic, biogenic, or fracked, if it’s pumped into homes through the existing Achieving a net-zero emissions society distribution network, it will face similar inevitably means a substantial decline in leakage rates, and ultimately have the same gas consumption. With gas overtaking coal negative climate impact from methane as the largest source of fossil fuel emissions leakage into the atmosphere. in the United States, greater focus has been given to its true climate impact. A growing body of research has highlighted the high global warming potential of Whether the methane methane, the main constituent of gas. is synthetic, biogenic, Methane’s radiative force,11 which is 36 times or fracked, if it’s more potent than CO2, and its pervasive leakage along the gas supply chain – both pumped into homes of which are proving more severe than through the existing previously understood – increase the distribution network, urgency of its near-term mitigation. it will face similar New findings suggest methane leakage leakage rates, and throughout the nation’s gas delivery system ultimately have the is much more widespread than officials understood just a few years ago. In 2018, same negative climate research published in the journal Science impact from methane found the leakage rate in the U.S.
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